mediastudies.press co-director Dave Park on ‘community over commercialization’

The Copim team interviewed mediastudies.press co-director Dave Park for Open Access Week:

As a media studies scholar, I interpret “Community over Commercialisation” very much in terms my field of study has laid out for me. Numerous traditions claimed by media studies address the clash between growth-oriented and community-based models for how media operate. One point of convergence in these traditions is the unifying idea that once media outlets are put in service of the extractive principles of growth-oriented models, community will suffer. Communities are turned into groups of customers, and they are regarded not in terms of what ideas and curiosities might hold them together, but in terms of what financial value can be extracted from them. The internet, once prized for its potential to replace hierarchies with more horizontal relationships, has in many cases become a tool for the reinforcement of hierarchies. Untethered from the growth demands of much of the scholarly publishing world, the field of open scholarship can operate effectively as a shelter for organic scholarly communities.

The full interview is on Copim’s site.